Jeff Zhang

Period 5
Battle Royale Essay
Battle Royale
I thought that this was one of the most interesting and, at the same time, one of the most
violent books that I have ever read. What set it apart from most novels is the fact that it described
in concise detail how each student died. One example that sticks out in my mind is how a fight
between a male student and a female student is won by the girl by stabbing her fingers into his
eyes and letting him bleed to death. It just amazes me that such a book could be so popular that it
is printed and accepted by readers in Japan and then translated over to English for the United
States and receive the same amount, if not a greater amount, of popularity here. Aside from all
the bloody and gory descriptions of how each individual was killed in the book, I wonder if a
lesson could be learned from it.
But wait, a moral to a story about 42 students hacking each other to pieces? It seems sort
of far-fetched, but maybe. I can draw parallels between this book and the Saw movie series.
Personally, I would never pay to go to a movie to see blood and gore (Ha, Ha! Yes! That dude
got his head blown off! Yes!; what.) for two hours straight, and Im not sure that many people
do. My interest in the series is the philosophy behind it. The idea that life is the ultimate value
and the extremist idea of forcing people to understand thisI find this all very fascinating.
Similarly, I find that Battle Royal could serve as a psychological study. 42 contestants.
One survivor. Trust. Deception. Betrayal. How do humans react under the most wretched of
conditions? I would imagine that a university somewhere requires reading the book for their
psychology class. What can be learned is that usually an individual values his or her own life
over anything and would do anything to preserve it. In such a case as what happens in the book,
it might actually be safer to remain alone because of the possibility of being betrayed by who
you are with.
It seems that in our modern day world the fulcrum, if you will, is competition. Students
work hard in school to receive good grades, multinational corporations stress that they have the
lowest sale prices, countries ship prominent young athletes to million dollar private institutions
to prepare for the Olympics, etc. Battle Royales entire plot was the description of a competition
if you think about it. Competition is the essence of what drives the world to improve and forces
people to work harder. Thus, we can consider it a blessing that we have so much competition.
But at the same time, it is a curse. It pervades each and every end of existence and has no
mercy. Those left behind the wave of acceptance letters and physical examinations are left to live
as well as they can. Perhaps the reason of why there are so many people living in poverty in the
United States (the world richest country, for goodness sake!) is because of our overachieveristic
attitude. The same is true in the Eastern Asian countries. There, the pressure of the educational
atmosphere is crushing. As well as having the highest performance rate on college examination
tests worldwide, it makes sense that, reciprocally, that region of the world has also the highest
rate of teen suicides.
As another point, rather than questioning the morality of competition, maybe it should
just be outright embraced. Nature and the principles of natural selection and evolution all stem
from the idea that the weak must fall and the strong will win. Who are we to break the mold set
by our ancestors?
Although maybe the author didnt intend the books purpose to be this, Battle Royale is a
brilliant parody of this social issue; a sort of Animal Farm for our societys cutthroat mindset.
High school students killing each other to survive in their environment, each individual having
different abilities and weapons to exploit These are all the principles of one-upping each
other, no? As well as that, disregarding the fact that the books author is Japanese, it fits that the
setting for the story is in Japan, or the Greater East Asian Republic, for that matter.
I could compare this novel to another book that I have read. The Overachievers is a, can I
call it, report of our American competition. In it, the author goes back to her old high school,
now supposedly ranked No. 1 in the United States, and profiles the lives of the best students, the
4.5-4.8 GPA kids. What she finds is that the academic mindset has changed. It is no longer
considered exceptional or amazing if a student is able to maintain a 4.2 while being captain of
the Swim Team, and the First Chair of the Orchestra, and the president of the community student
board, and the No. 1 for Tennis; it is required. Parents stress that the only way for their children
to make a decent living is to get into one of the top ten colleges and come out as a brain surgeon
or a Bostonian lawyer. Perfection! Precision! Excellence! Nothing else.
What has become of the world? We high-schoolers are literally pitted against each other.
Though not with sickles or machine guns as in the story, but with our numbers and community
service we battle. But society rolls on. It improves. I would imagine that in a few years the idea
of a flying car will become reality. Climate control, anyone? Genetic modification to rid
ourselves of disorders, complete eradication of disease, programming our children to make
them perfect, universal securitization to eliminate crime, etc. The cost is only that we make our
next generations miserable and mechanical beings; computers that can run and dunk a basketball.
We infuse our sons and daughters with the idea that if you cant do AP Calculus in the 8
th
grade
that then you are useless and then we watch silently from the side as they cut themselves and
commit suicide rather than face disappointment.
But its a good trade, right? Its fair, right?